24 June 2012

Servlet 3 (JSR 315) containers (edit)

 Servlet v3 support in different web application containers + current support state

  • Glassfish 3+ (12/2009)
  • Resin 4 (2/2010)
  • JBoss 6 (12/2010)
  • Tomcat 7 (1/2011)
  • IBM WebSphere v8 (6/2011)
  • Oracle WebLogic 12c (12/2011) 
  • Jetty 8 (milestone)

21 June 2012

Expression Language 3.0 is in public review

The Expression Language (EL) is widely used in JSP and JSF. With version 3 the EL now becomes an independent specification. The EL v3 (JSR 314) is in public review until the end of July. It will be released in sync with Java EE 7 (Update: EL 3.0 was released in may 2013). New features include:

  •  As an independent specification, EL now comes with a standalone API, allowing usage outside a web container.
    • You can write your own ELProcessor. The source code is available, but I wish they had put the javadoc for  browsing at the project site as well.
  • Java 8 stuff
    • Lambda expressions
    • Collection literals follow proposed Java 8 syntax
      • List: [1, "two", 3.0]
      • Set: {1, 2, 3}
      • Map: {"one":1, "two":2, "three":3}
    • Collection streaming
  • Assignment operator (=) for changing values:
    • ${customer.name = 'Jan'}
  • String concatenation: + or cat operator
    • ${‘Welcome ‘ += customer.name += ‘ to our site’}.
  • Support for static references using the T construct (Type). 
    • By default only java.* and javax.* packages are available, but you can modify this using the EL API.
      • ${T(java.util.Calendar).APRIL}
      • ${T(java.util.Calendar).getInstance()}
    •  You can call constructors as a static method without a name. To call the default Calendar constructor:
      • ${T(java.util.Calendar).()}
    • For java.lang you can use the class without using the T construct
      • ${Boolean.TRUE}

7 June 2012

Little known truths

Microsoft OneNote does not have find and replace.

Install the OneMore OneNote plugin to add this incomprehensible omission.